Day routes, skinning and Fontainbleau (Alpine climbing)

Monday 10 March 2008 12:21PM

Been a varied and hectic two weeks. Half recovered from Fantasia, Ross and I went up for a day hit on Pointe Lachenal’s Pellissier gully. The routes hereabouts are great for “active rest” days, the only real hardship being getting up early in the morning to get the first telecabine up the mountain. The routes are short and easy enough to get back down for the last train, but tricky enough to be fun.

Thursday night I caught the sleeper to Paris for a weekend of bouldering and culture with my girlfriend. My first time in Fontainbleau, I’ll definitely be back!

Straight off the sleeper back to Chamonix on Tuesday morning and visiting old friends were keen to ski. Weather pretty awful on Wednesday (coldest I’ve got skiing all winter I think, Le Tour was properly Scottish feeling!) but nice on Thursday, so we toured up to the Argentiere glacier from the Lognan (top lift closed due to high winds). I then left the rest of the group and raced up to the col du tour noir on my own. I’ve not been running at all in Chamonix, and climbing and skiing don’t usually provide the same intensity of effort that running does. I’ve just bought some ski mountaineering race kit though, so it was great to test it out and really push myself going uphill. The pounding headache and nausea at the col was strangely pleasurable, a return to my roots!

Next day I felt pretty exhausted, but Ross was keen and the weather was good, so another “active rest” day was had on the amusingly named but since downgraded M6 Solar (M5+!).

Conscious of the risk of seduction from the convenient routes on Pointe Lachenal, and wanting to take advantage of the early weekend lifts on the Midi, we decided to head up to the routes in the Cirque above the Requin hut the next day. Originally we wanted to do the superb looking Sorenson-Eastman route, but there was already a team on it (they’d stayed at the hut for the night, so were halfway up it by the time we rocked up at 10am!), so we settled for the excellent Ice is Nice (IV, 5. 550m). An awesome day, probably the best alpine ice route I’ve climbed this year (certainly the iciest!). Just missed the last train home so a rocky ski and walk down to the valley rounded off a great day.

Pictures here.